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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Remembering the Pluto Campaign: A Success Story
The New Horizons mission to Pluto survived many near-death encounters with cancellation during its development. The Planetary Society worked the whole time to ensure it would launch.
New names for Pluto's little moons Kerberos and Styx; and a new moon for Neptune
Pluto's moons, formerly known as
New Horizons: Encounter Planning Accelerates
Back in 2005 and 2006, when Pluto’s second and third moons (Nix and Hydra) were discovered, searches by astronomers for still more moons didn’t reveal any. So the accidental discovery of Pluto’s fourth moon by the Hubble Space Telescope in mid-2011 raised the possibility that the hazards in the Pluto system might be greater than previously anticipated.
Pluto's seasons and what New Horizons may find when it passes by
New Horizons might see a Pluto with a northern polar cap, a southern polar cap, or both caps, according to work by Leslie Young.
When will New Horizons have better views of Pluto than Hubble does?
Last week, I posted an explainer on why Hubble's images of galaxies show so much more detail than its images of Pluto. Then I set you all a homework problem: when will New Horizons be able to see Pluto better than Hubble does? Here's the answer.
Why can Hubble get detailed views of distant galaxies but not of Pluto?
How come Hubble's pictures of galaxies billions of light years away are so beautifully detailed, yet the pictures of Pluto, which is so much closer, are just little blobs? I get asked this question, or variations of it, a lot. Here's an explainer.
New Contest: Name the Moons of Pluto!
The discoverers of Pluto's fourth and fifth moons are inviting the public to vote on (and write in candidates for) their formal names. Voting closes in two weeks.
Alan Stern Returns to Planetary Radio
The New Horizons Pluto mission PI provides an update, and introduces his new public project called Uwingu.
DPS 2012: Double occultation by Pluto and Charon
A few talks at last week's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting discussed observations of a double occultation -- both Pluto and Charon passing in front of the same star.
A fifth moon for Pluto, and a possible hazard for New Horizons
Pluto is now known to have at least five moons (Charon, Nix, Hydra, P4, and the newly discovered P5), and its burgeoning population might pose a risk to New Horizons during its flyby, three years from now.
Where are the big Kuiper belt objects?
Earlier today I wrote a post about how to calculate the position of a body in space from its orbital elements. I'm trying to get a big-picture view of what's going on in trans-Neptunian space.
Visiting the San Diego SpaceUp Unconference
Emily Lakdawalla and I drove down to the 3rd annual San Diego SpaceUp Unconference on February 4. We had great fun hanging out with the other space geeks.
Brief notes from Day 2 of the DPS-EPSC meeting
It's been a very full day at the DPS-EPSC 2011 joint meeting. My day was less full than it might have been, because I overslept and missed most of the morning's session. I really needed the rest though so I think it was probably for the best!
Scale solar system presentation slide, a provisional version for you to review
I'm preparing a talk for the Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show here in Pasadena on Sunday afternoon at 1:45. I have spent the morning putting together a slide that I have long wanted to have for presentations.
New Horizons Day 2: Liquids on Pluto's surface?
Jeff Moore's presentation was cool because of the discussion it stimulated. He considered what exogenic processes might be operating on Pluto's surface. What's an exogenic process? It's something that modifies the shape of the surface from the outside, and doesn't require the body to be geologically active inside.
New Horizons Day 2: Tectonic features on icy worlds
The second day of the New Horizons Workshop on Icy Surface Processes was about geology and geophysics. This long post just covers the first talk of that day.
New Horizons workshop, day 1: Chemistry & climate on Pluto & other cold places
Today and tomorrow I'm attending the New Horizons Workshop on Icy Surface Processes. The first day was all about the composition of the surface and atmosphere of Pluto, Charon, Triton, and other distant places.
A fourth moon for Pluto
That's right: Hubble observations have yielded the discovery of a third small body orbiting Pluto and Charon.
South of the Border
The last decade has seen an explosion in our understanding of the solar system with the discovery of the largest Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) of comparable size to Pluto.
The scale of our solar system
Space.com has taken advantage of the infinitely scrollable nature of Web pages to produce a really cool infographic on the scales of orbital distances in the solar system.